The sentence hung in the air like a balloon with just enough helium to be creepy. Laura tucked her legs under her so that it added an inch or two to her seated height and took a deep breath, thinking that there was no need to address the absurdity of the statement since she had clearly misunderstood him. She closed her eyes and waited for clarification. Across the desk, Dr. Aldrich sighed with his eyes. She knew that sigh. She and every other sap who landed themselves in his office. Dr. Aldrich leaned back in his chair and repeated himself, but Laura couldn’t get past the sharp squeak of the leather. The chair was unreasonably large. Everyone thought so. The possible reasons for owning a chair so regal only served to reinforce her belief that she had simply misunderstood him.
“I’m sorry, Dr. Aldrich. I’m not being a wiseass, I just have some cork left in my ears.” Laura opened her eyes and tilted her head, using her palm to pretend she was knocking water out of her ears. His arms were crossed now. Unamused. “We were talking about how you thought I could improve my mood” she continued, “and you said something I couldn’t hear. I’m listening; I promise.” Dr. Aldrich placed his palms on his lap and leaned forward like he was about to spill some juicy gossip.
“I said you need to cut back on your
alcohol intake. Alcohol is a downer. A depressant. Your mood swings can easily be explained by-“ he kept talking, but Laura stopped listening. She’d heard him right the first time, alright. She untucked her legs and leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees and supporting the weight of her dizzy
head with her hands. As he spoke, she studied the smoothness of his cheeks. Perfectly round, like a know-it-all chipmunk who’d stuffed his nuts just right. His cheeks seemed permanently blushed.
Not angry blushed or shivering cold blushed. Not even crude comment blushed. She couldn’t quite pinpoint the color, but she figured the workload on his little heart must be enormous and that not
all the blood willing itself through his veins must have known where to go. He was a very animated man when he started casting stones. His jowls shook with authority and Laura fondly recalled how
much she used to love her aunt’s waterbed. As he started in on healthy lifestyle alternatives, Laura tried to imitate the way he was sitting. She scoot her chair back so that she was about a foot
away from the edge of the desk. She puffed her belly out as best as she could, but she knew she wouldn’t come close to the sweaty laminate assault happening on the other side. She wondered how he
pissed. Did he have to raise his gut to get to his penis? If so, he surely needed two hands to do so. Did he just lumber over the toilet and hope for the best? Maybe he sat to pee. It’d be the
only polite thing to do.
“Is any of this sinking in, Ms. Beauregard?”
Laura realized she’d let her jaw go slack and tried to achieve his shade of pink as she wiped away the thin line of drool
tethering her imagination to her shirt. Sitting up straight and looking him in the eyes for the very first time, Laura used her grown up voice. The same voice she’d used on her kids when they
were little. The same voice she’d used at the County Clerk’s when she said she wanted to divorce her husband but keep his last name. It was steady. Sure. Totally contrary to her presence in his
office in the first place.
“Dr. Aldrich, let me repeat this out
loud so that I am certain there is no misunderstanding. You want me to cut back on the alcohol. You want me to eat right, exercise, and live a healthier lifestyle and, in doing so, my mood will
improve. Is that correct?”
“That is correct.”
“Let me repeat this so that there is No mistaking it, Dr. Aldrich-“ Laura did not raise her voice, just packed a few more sandbags behind it. “You think I should ‘cut back’. Be healthier. You think living a healthy lifestyle directly affects one’s state of being. If one is not living healthy, then they must surely be fooling themselves into a false sense of happiness. Is that correct?” He began to shift uncomfortably in his chair. The squeaks only fueled Laura’s fire. “Doctor Aldrich,” she was sure to enunciate his name, sending each syllable into his goddamned sighing eyes and pulling them out of his never-satisfied mouth, “do you mean to say that I console myself with alcohol?”
“Well, yes… It’s a means of-“
“Of coping. Yes. With my divorce. With my job. With my life. I use alcohol to make myself feel better and you, Doc-tor Ald-rich, think I need to recognize this and ‘cut back’. Is That Correct, Doctor?” Laura placed her hands on the desk and readied herself to stand.
“Understand that I’m trying to help you, Ms-“
Laura rose to her feet and grabbed
each corner of the desk, leaning in, catching faint whiffs of warm milk and cat piss.
“Doctor Aldrich, would you consider
it fair to say that people cope with grief in a variety of ways?”
His hands and head weren’t sure how to agree. They just sort of bobbled and flailed in the way a plastic chair being dragged
across a wooden floor might.
“You would agree that while I may
use alcohol to cope with things, other people may have different crutches. Say food, for instance. Would you agree that some people stuff their little faces because their heart is a
supermassive black hole” Laura leaned in further, the smell was unbearable. “And all the burgers and ice cream in the world can never fill it. Not even if they try. And they try, alright. They
try morning, noon, and all hours of the night.” What could he say? A sinister smile crept across Laura’s face as she sat back down and placed her feet up on the desk. “So since we agree on all
these things, you think that cutting back on the alcohol and being healthy is going to help me, huh?”
He was speechless. There was something like anger in his eyes, but overriding shame in his sweaty face. He sat there like a kid
who never got picked for anything. Like someone who wished they’d never shown up at all. Quietly, so quietly that it barely made it through the pungent aroma of cat piss sounding him, he
muttered,
“That’s correct…”
“Well then!” Laura took her feet off
and slapped her thighs in affirmation, “Consider it done! After all, what sort of worthless piece of rapidly decomposing shit would I be if I didn’t follow golden advice like that? I mean, it
really is so ridiculously simple, isn’t it? Be healthier and you’ll be happier! It doesn’t take a sweaty, pigeon-toed, cat fucking asshole with a silly degree in psychology to realize that, does
it?”
Laura stood up and grabbed her sweater from the arm of the chair. She thanked him and drove straight home to her empty
apartment. The bills sat in an uneven pile by the door. Her machine beeped with messages she was sure weren’t for her. She made her way to the kitchen and retrieved her favorite glass. The foamy
head on a freshly poured beer had always been her favorite part. For this reason, she was sure to shake the tea extra hard.